


Conference Call

by misura



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony, drunk, in Bern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conference Call

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jayjaybe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jayjaybe/gifts).



As was par of the course for such occasions, the conference at Bern was 10% business mixed with 90% pleasure-substituting-for-boredom because, as it turned out, not a lot of people were geniuses.

Most of them weren't, in fact, even if a lot of them seemed to _think_ they were, which was why Tony ended up spending most of his time in Bern either drunk or avoiding people who mistakenly thought they could impress him with their lack of genius. Sometimes both at the same time.

Which was, more or less, how he ended up at a bar at half past seven in the morning, when he was supposed to be giving a lecture on something-or-another at eight at the conference center on the other side of town.

"I'm a genius," he told the only other guy in the place. Not a great looker, but nice enough if you preferred brains over beauty, as Tony did when it came to men.

The smart ones usually knew better than to call him later or try selling their story (or, God and Pepper forbid, actual pictures) to the media.

"I know," the guy said, and Tony felt a moment's warm glow at having been absolutely right about the guy being smart. "You're Tony Stark."

"I am," Tony said. "And you are?"

"Not planning to attend your lecture," the guy replied, which seemed a bit rude; Tony gave _great_ lectures; he was a genius lecturer. People should be standing in line to get to attend Tony's lecture.

"Yeah, I was actually asking about your name, buttercup."

"Call me Yinsen," the guy said.

Tony wondered if it was his first or his last name. Last, probably; Tony wasn't exactly feeling a lot of love here, for all that his claim of genius had been accepted readily enough.

"Yinsen, huh? Anything I should know you from, Yinsen?" Tony waved the bartender over. "Is there a Yinsen theorem? A Yinsen equation? Did you build something? Wrote an article I might have heard of, maybe?"

"Nothing." Yinsen shook his head. "I'm a nobody, Stark." He didn't _sound_ like a nobody, exactly - more like he felt that _Tony_ would think he was a nobody, which, well, probably, yes, but that was just because Tony was Tony. It wasn't anything personal.

"Aren't we all?" Tony sipped his new drink. "On some fundamental level, I mean." Not bad at all, really. Packed a nice punch. "I mean, you don't know someone, they're not anyone to you, right? And then you meet them and shake their hand and they tell you their names and suddenly they're someone. Not nobody. Am I making sense here?"

Yinsen grimaced. "If this is how your lecture is going to sound, I'm not going to miss much."

"Okay, now that - that is simply offensive," Tony said. "Honestly, I think you may even have hurt my feelings. Just a little bit, mind. A teensy, tiny little bit."

"You're drunk, Stark," Yinsen said, and Tony thought that, really, if this was how the guy did physics, small wonder Tony'd never heard of him.

Statements of the blindingly obvious were so very last millennium.

"Correction: I'm very drunk," Tony said. "And I intend to drink a lot more before I will even _think_ about getting on that stage. But when I do, I'll blow your pants off. Seriously, you'll hear about it later and wish you'd been there."

Yinsen looked skeptical. For no good reason at all, he reminded Tony of Rhodey, who never truly doubted him, of course, even if he sometimes pretended that he did, to keep Tony humble.

Always trying to do the impossible, that was Rhodey for you.

"So you're - what? A visitor? Wait, no, let me guess. First time?" It was just a shot in the dark, really, except that Tony had found that most of his fellow scientists preferred to roam the wild world out there either in groups or, at a pinch, in pairs. "Just got your cherry popped?"

Yinsen blinked once, and then he blushed a little bit. "You make it sound like a lot more than what it is, Stark. But yes, I have not often traveled beyond the borders of my country."

"You should, it's fun," Tony said. "Also, I've been told it broadens the mind."

"Travel is expensive." Yinsen shrugged. "And I do not earn a lot of money making weapons."

Tony considered rattling off the whole speech about military research and how it benefited the general population and all that, but his head hurt and he wasn't really in the mood, anyway.

"Well, whatever floats your boat. No judgments here," he said, and Yinsen's mouth did something that looked like a smile, and Tony relaxed a little.

"You're not what I'd expected," Yinsen said, which was pretty unusual. Most people told Tony he was _exactly_ like they'd expected him to be, possibly because there was just so much footage out there of Tony doing pretty much anything you could think of.

(Well, Pepper did her best to get the raunchier stuff taken down or suppressed or whatever, but other than that, if it had Tony in it, people apparently wanted to see it.)

"If it's any comfort, you're not who I pictured I'd be taking back to my hotel room, either."

Jumping the gun a bit, possibly, but then, he _did_ have a lecture to deliver at eight. Nine, if he elected to be fashionably late, as he usually did - ten, if he, as Rhodey put it, 'pushed it'.

At eleven, the audience should have slimmed down to the true fanatics. Might be fun, might be a pain in the butt; impossible to tell up front which it would be.

Yinsen blinked once. "People don't tell you 'no' very often, do they, Stark?"

"It's my charming personality," Tony said. The money and genius helped, too, possibly. "You can say 'no', if you want to, obviously. I mean, no pressure or anything. Might be a fun story to tell your friends back home. Not as fun a story as it would be if you'd said yes, of course, but still pretty fun."

"I think that maybe I will come to your lecture after all," Yinsen said.

"Good choice."


End file.
